When astronomers peer into the depths of the Milky Way galaxy, which is our home, they can see a lot of stuff going on. There are endless stars swirling masses of gas and other features, but one light source, in particular, has caught the attention of researchers that are trying to understand exactly what it …
The Sun is one of the big reasons why we’re all here today. Without it, life likely wouldn’t have taken root on Earth — or, at the very least, the type of life that covers our planet today simply wouldn’t have been possible. That said, there’s still a lot we don’t know about our star …
The Hubble Space Telescope is about to embark on its most intense investigation ever. NASA has tasked the space telescope with studying over 300 stars in our own galaxy and neighboring galaxies. The survey will mainly focus on younger stars in the hopes of better understanding their evolution. The Hubble Space Telescope has been with …
Researchers have spotted a planet orbiting a white dwarf star just 80 light-years from Earth. White dwarf stars don’t typically have planets orbiting them due to the nature of how stars live and die. The planet in this case is many times the size of the star itself, making the pair an even odder couple. …
Researchers at the European Southern Observatory have captured the first-ever images of a planetary system with multiple exoplanets. The system revolves around a star that is a lot like our sun, only younger. Observing these alien systems will teach scientists how systems like our own formed and evolved over time. The technology of detecting exoplanets …
Astronomers have observed the nearby supergiant star Betelgeuse dimming in recent months. Some have theorized that the star is about to go supernova, exploding violently as it dies. A new theory suggests the star’s instability is creating massive dark spots on its surface, making it darker. Betelgeuse is a massive star that is clearly visible …
A team of astronomers has spotted what they describe as an “ultra-massive” white dwarf hanging out in space at a distance of around 150 light-years from Earth. The star’s size is what initially caught the attention of the scientist team, but further investigation revealed the star to be even more bizarre than anyone could have …
One of the more interesting astronomy stories that came out at the tail end of 2019 was the bizarre behavior of the nearby star known as Betelgeuse. It sits somewhere between 520 and 650 light-years from Earth, and that’s extremely close in the grand scheme of things, making its behavior of particular interest to us …
Our Sun flies solo, chilling out in a relatively calm arm of the Milky Way galaxy and not causing much trouble for its stellar neighbors. That’s great for us, but it’s not uncommon for astronomers to find stars that orbit each other closely in an object called a binary. Binary star systems aren’t uncommon, but …
Our Sun is the reason we’re all here today. Some day it’ll go boom, but we’ll all (hopefully) be long gone, one way or another, by the time that happens. In the meantime, however, astronomers can observe the changes happening to distant stars, some of which may offer clues as to how our own star …
